Traffic ticket in Orveito, Italy

Of course not -- sex crimes and other felonies will but being a traffic ticket beater will not. And no impact on France.

If a collection agency gets involved, i believe it has the potential to affect your credit somewhere down the road, which is something I personally wouldn't want to deal with.

Paul, They certainly took their time in notifying you of the tickets! This is a good reminder that it's not only Florence that has "ZTL" areas, but other towns as well. As they've involved a Collection Agency, you'll likely have to pay the tickets or suffer adverse effects on your credit rating (I assume it's a Collection Agency on this side of the Atlantic?). As the others have mentioned, I doubt this would prevent you from entering Europe (but don't know for sure?). Given the revenue that's being lost in unpaid tickets issued to foreigners and also the current state of the economy, it's certainly possible that European authorities will become much more aggressive in trying to collect. Good luck!

The hell of this is that Hotel Corso in Orveito never let the police know I was a guest. I parked the car out of the city walls and walked to the hotel. The clerk at Hotel Corso said it was OK to drive the car in to drop off our luggage. They even drew me the route to take in and out of the city. Then when we left they "helped" load the luggage. When we got to Assisi we were missing a bag. They said that they have put into a room of a guest that was checking it. We had to drive out of our way back to Orveito to retrieve of "lost" bag. This is what we got a third ticket for. If downloaded all the forms and sent them to the Prefettura Di Terni registered return receipt as required. I am al ready about $125.00 in to this and refuse to pay anymore. The other thing is that if you have a handicap plaque you can drive in anytime. This my wife has.

Paul,
This may help http://www.bella-toscana.com/traffic_violations_italy.htm It seems to confirm that too much time has passed.

I though of Orveito trying to go through the auto rental company so I called the auto rental company. The car was rented in July of 2008 and the first notice of any violation Orveito sent was in January of 2010. The rental company said that since it was a year and a half later they, the rental company, could not be billed or bill me. I think that Orveito waits so long thinking that people will no longer have any records to back up where they were staying. I still have the dated receipt from the Hotel Corso in Orveito. Just a suggestion. People keep you hotel receipts for several years and file them so you can find them.

The problem of hotels "forgetting" to notify ZTL authorities is often reported here, esp. Florence hotels. Usually these unwary travelers have been assured - by the hotel, rental car company, or someone here - that the hotel will take care of getting your license plate entered into the city computer, "no problema." Yeah, right. The problema comes in your mailbox months later. From what we see here, being able to prove, with hotel receipts, that you were just unloading/loading baggage often doesn't work as a defense, because (guess why?) the time for contesting the ticket has expired. Another good reason to take the train in Italy.